There’s a bit of overlap, Easter for example, is a praying holiday but also a major candy holiday. New Year’s Eve, St. Patrick’s Day and Cinco de Mayo are the big booze festivals, while it’s practically a felony to eat anything other than burgers and dogs off the grill on the Fourth of July, Memorial Day and Labor Day.

Christmas, the Babe Ruth of holidays, is so widely celebrated it spills across all the categories, although I’ve yet to wash down a grilled bratwurst with a mug of eggnog on Dec. 25.

Today we stand on the eve of Halloween, which along with Valentine’s Day and the previously mentioned Easter completes the trio of candy-centric celebrations.

As a kid I looked forward to Halloween, as all kids do, in anticipation of the annual haul of sugary swag liberated from neighbors who forked over the candy corn and Clark Bars under threat of reprisal. If you notice, “trick” comes before “treat” in “trick or treat.” It’s actually extortion with Milk Duds as protection money.

Like everything else over the years, Halloween has mushroomed into a major commercial event with national brands pushing whatever it is they’re hawking with “prices so low they’re frightening,” and theme parks investing millions to promote haunted house spectaculars.

Those plastic Batman masks that once cut into our eye sockets while Mom and Dad waited with a flashlight at the end of the neighbor’s driveway have given way to elaborate get-ups formally reserved for a movie set or a party at Truman Capote’s house.

Candy is kid’s stuff. Today Halloween is about sex.

Having made a lifetime commitment to adolescence, millions of adults have co-opted Halloween as the one day a year they can safely drop their image of respectability and publicly indulge their inner avatar, be it a sexy nurse, sexy pirate, or sexy ear of corn.

Google it. Someone actually sells a “sexy” ear of corn costume.

While technically not a booze holiday, Halloween is quickly becoming one. After all, if you’re going to squeeze into the spandex Cat suit a couple of Mojitos can’t hurt, right?

My first Halloween in Los Angeles coincided with a monsoon downpour. On the evening news I watched live as two guys in evening gowns were pulled from the L.A. River by an LAFD helicopter after driving their car into the wash. One fella lost a high heel about half way to safety.

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My guess is those weren’t their everyday evening gowns.

Which begs the question what’s the real mask — the one we wear on Halloween or the costume we don everyday?

Of course celebrities are trendsetters when it comes to sexing up Halloween, although it’s not easy telling which is Miley Cyrus’s Halloween costume and which is her everyday Starbucks run outfit.

For adults or kids, Halloween is about fun and of course that means the joy-police are gunning for it.

“Candy is poison,” screech the health sheriff types as if any kid anywhere on Earth would freely chose a celery stalk over Red Vines.